


these ghosts in my hair

by antematter



Category: Reign (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Fix-It, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-07
Updated: 2015-04-03
Packaged: 2018-03-10 22:19:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 13,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3305435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antematter/pseuds/antematter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mary's haunted by the prophecy. (Or, the season 2 AU that I needed, and maybe you did too.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Episode tag to Sins of the Past. Potentially may become a fix-it?

It’s only later when Mary sees Claude with Narcisse that she goes to Catherine. If truth be told, she doesn’t always feel comfortable around Claude because sometimes the girl looks at her and there’s something accusing in her gaze. _They’re my family not yours. You stayed and I had to go. You’re not her daughter._

Mary stays away from Catherine these days.

But she misses her, and more importantly, she missed the hallucinations and the syphilis. She likes to think that Catherine might have missed her too, not that she lets on.

Catherine is sitting dejectedly, feet in the birdcage when Mary enters. The winces that she gives are tired now, and her feet are bleeding. The birds seem as voracious as ever though.

“You’re still going?” Mary says as she crosses the floor.

Catherine looks up. Her knuckles are white as she clutches the arms of her chair. “Claude told the servants to go away. I think she may have told the doctors to leave me be for another hour.”

“Oh,” says Mary, sitting down. “Do you want me to get them to come back?”

Catherine sighs. It’s a heavy sound. “No,” she says. “Let them peck. Claude thinks I deserve it anyway.” She kicks out at the birds half-heartedly. “Sometimes I don’t think I was meant to have daughters.”

Mary watches the birds flutter anxiously around their cage and land back on Catherine’s feet. She reaches over and puts her hand on Catherine’s. Her hands are softer than she expects, and Catherine tenses at the sudden contact, then relaxes. Her shoulders slump.

“You’ve done okay.” Her words sound disingenuous to her ( _barren queen, how would you know?_ ) but they seem to touch Catherine. Her eyes are softer when she replies.

“I loved you once,” she says, and Mary can remember the time they spent together when she was a child. “I loved you and sent you away, and then when you came back you were a threat to my family. To Francis.”

Mary remembers that too. Arriving back in the French court, scared and lonely. She remembers the fierce dislike of the then queen and her many attempts to keep her from her son. She remembers Colin’s hands on her skin, a grim foreshadowing, and she shivers. She didn’t have Francis on her side then. She thinks of Clarissa then and, as always, she is sorry.

Catherine is watching her, and as usual, she has the feeling that the other woman knows what she is thinking.

“You said the prophecy would come to pass,” Mary says. There is a question in her voice, but she’s not sure what it is.

Catherine response is slow when she answers. “I don’t know.”

“But Clarissa,” Mary says, hysteria colouring her cheeks.

“I don’t know,” Catherine repeats. “Francis said she was still alive.”

“It was a hallucination,” Mary insists. They both know she is pleading, but neither acknowledge that.

“I don’t know,” Catherine says.

They are silent. The only sound between them is that of the birds ruffling their feathers, and the quiet room makes it sound like ghostly footsteps.

“I think I have made a mistake, marrying your son,” Mary says. Her voice catches in her throat, but she thinks she might be past tears.

Catherine turns her hand over so that she is holding Mary’s. She squeezes.

 

 

 

 

She sleeps with Stirling in the room now.

It’s cold and it’s lonely but with his warm, doggy breath fogging quietly in the corner of the room, she feels just that little bit safer. And now Francis sleeps in her room too. Mary watches him from across the room, and he is so beautiful and alive and there and she wants to cry because he’s a good man, and a good husband, and he tried to be a good king, but everything is always between them.

But tonight he is here. And maybe tonight she is ready to be here too.

“There’s a perfectly good goosefeather bed here,” she says, and watches his face light up with a hope that she wants to believe in.

Just one night, she thinks. Maybe tonight they can be happy.

It’s too much and too fast though, and his breath in her ear is both comforting and terrifying at the same time, and she’s drifting in and out of a frightened sleep when she just can’t take it anymore. Her attackers are breathing down her neck when she leaps from the bed, reaching for her dog. A scream is dying on her lips.

They tell her, time and time again, that she has power, that she wields so much power over all these men in her life: Francis, Conde, Bash, but the truth is: Mary sleeps with Stirling in the room now because when she needed it most, she was powerless.

But Francis holds out his arms, and it’s just too tempting to collapse into his embrace and believe that somehow everything will be okay.

Francis, she thinks then and there. It’s you. It’s always been you.

 

 

 

 

She’s barely allowed herself to forget the prophecy when the King of Navarre threatens them. England is a mistake that keeps rising up from its grave. She doesn’t have Nostradamus’s vision but everything is closing in on her, and Francis ruined the start of his reign trying to protect her from Narcisse. Because of her he made an enemy of the Protestants, and of England, Elizabeth will kill Francis because of her. And then there’s the prophecy. She’s not sure what to believe anymore, but it’s getting harder not to, with these enemies at their door.

“I don’t know what to do,” she says, entering Catherine’s chambers without announcing herself. Catherine is sitting on her bed, exhaustion in her shoulders. She looks up at Mary’s entrance. “It’s England. Navarre wants money, and if we don’t give it to them, they’ll go to England.”

There is no surprise, just resignation when Catherine replies. “I warned you,” she says. “They never mean any good, these cousins.”

Mary wants to defend Conde, wants to protest his innocence, but his words earlier in the night still sting. He was supposed to be a friend. “Elizabeth will never leave me alone,” she says instead. “Maybe this is how it comes to pass, the prophecy. Maybe she kills Francis because of me.”

They made so many mistakes, the two of them. Baited the bear one too many times, played with fire.

“I didn’t have syphilis,” Catherine says. “Someone was trying to poison Henry and they got me too.”

Mary takes that as agreement. She nods slowly, and turns to go. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I never wanted this to happen. I never meant to hurt Francis.” _He never wanted to hurt me either_. She thinks she might be apologizing for more than just Elizabeth.

“Elizabeth won’t leave you alone, Mary,” Catherine calls out. She stops in the doorway. “Or even if she does, it won’t matter. There’ll always be someone there, someone at your back. You’re a queen, and Francis is a king. You’re both always targets, prophecy or not.”

How the tables have turned, Mary thinks. Maybe she believes in the prophecy, or maybe she doesn’t, but now Mary can’t see past Elizabeth, and she can’t see past her rapists, and maybe she just doesn’t have a future without some shadowy figure in her path.

But maybe he does.

 

 

 

 

The firelight is playing across his face, as she paces around the room. He decides to give the money to Navarre, of course he does, but he wouldn’t have to if she weren’t his wife, if she weren’t a threat to England. She can still remember being in his arms, the feel of him around her. She felt safe then, but what good is that if he’s going to die because of her?

She was strong once. Maybe she can be strong again. Maybe she can save him.

It’s like a song they know too well, and they play their roles beautifully as she gives him up for what feels like the last time. But there is hurt and there is resignation on his face, and this time she thinks she may have lost him for good.

“How could you send me to another?” he asks, and what she hears is _do you love me so little that you could do that?_

And she knows she’s about to lose him, knows that she can’t keep sending him away and expecting that he will keep being there like he has, and she can’t stop the truth from coming out. “Because I love you,” she confesses. She can’t stop herself from touching his face either, but her fingers feel dead against his skin. The flickering of the fire lights up his hair, and he’s alive and beautiful, and full of golden promise. But all she’s got are ashes lingering beneath her skin and ghosts behind her eyelids, and she’ll bring nothing but death for him.

“One of us should be happy,” she says, but what she means is _you should live._

He is still as she kisses his cheek and it tastes like fear.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mary takes matters into her own hands. Francis tries to move on, but they're all just replaying history.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't hate the latest episode, and I'm interested to see where they're going with it, but I don't know how they're going to fix Mary/Francis anymore (and I've run out of ways to try their way), so I'm just doing my own thing apparently?

Francis thinks he’s going mad. There’s precedent for it – his father went mad, and his mother was briefly mad, and true, they were poisoned, but still, there’s precedent.

It started small at first – just little things like noticing the little touches that tell him Mary’s been in a room, like the fire left burning in her grate when he looks in on her bedroom one morning. Or her perfume in the air of a room she’s just left. Her favourite flowers left in a vase on a mantelpiece.

But it’s getting worse.

The two chairs side by side in the room she’s just left. The sound of her laughter echoing in corridors when he opens his door in the evening. Conde’s glove, left forgotten on the arm of her favourite chair.

They’re growing careless, or he’s noticing it more, and it stings. The way her eyes search for Conde when she enters a room. It’s not like Conde’s always at her side, but somehow, when she reaches for a drink or when she drops something, he appears by her side. He’s as acutely attuned to her needs as Francis might have been once. Might become again, if only she’d let him.

But it’s another night of cool smiles across the table, of her looking the other way and Francis just can’t take it anymore. He leaves the room while the music is still playing, waving it off as a bit of a headache. He can’t help it though – he looks behind as he is leaving, and she isn’t watching him go. She’s beautiful – clad in a black silk dress that falls just off her shoulders, her bare skin gleams in the bright lights. He aches to touch her again, but as always she’s too far away. He watches as she reaches out a hand to Conde, as he brushes her shoulder.

She’s beautiful, but distant, like a dream he might have had once.

He’s tired of her leaving him behind.

His footsteps are heavy as he traces out the familiar path to his son. To his son he’ll always be father, to his son, he’ll always be needed, wanted. His tiny fingers close around Francis’s thumb, and there is an ache in his chest, but also something akin to peace.

“Francis!”

He turns and somehow, like once before, Lola is there. Lola is there, and Lola will always be inextricably linked to him through their son. It’s a mistake, they both know, and it doesn’t _mean_ anything, it never does, but for a moment he just wants to be close to someone, wants to be able to touch them without them recoiling, and it’s stupid and he loves Mary, but he lets himself reach out and take Lola’s hand too.

And it’s all wrong. Her hand is too small or too big in his hand. It was wrong that one time when they ended up with his son, and it’s wrong now, and she’s not Mary, and it makes him pause. Their faces are so close together and her lips so near to his. Anything could happen.

Their baby starts to cry.

“What are we doing, Francis?” Lola asks. The moment shatters. Dropping her hand, he takes a step back. She looks so small, standing there, arms hanging uselessly by her side. He wonders what is written on his face.

“I don’t know.”

He never wanted to become like this, never wanted to become his father but here he is with his second family, the one that works better than his first. And he knows the choice that is hanging in the balance, that once hung in the balance for his father. Catherine or Diane. Mary or Lola.

History always repeats itself.

“I don’t want to hurt Mary again,” Lola says. She picks up the baby, but his wails don’t die down.

They’re always worrying about hurting Mary, Francis thinks. But maybe life moves on.

He wonders what Lola would say if he asked her to be his mistress. He wonders if he would ever ask.

 

 

 

 

He looks for his mother. It’s been a while since he’s needed her council, but he finds her at the greenhouse. There are no guards, and she is sitting on a bench, a fistful of flowers in her hands. Lost in thought, her fingers are anxiously shredding the petals.

“Francis,” she says, starting at the sight of him. Her hands open and the petals float free. “What brings you here?”

He sits down next to her, fighting the urge to lay his head on her shoulder. “I don’t know how to make things right Mother,” he says. “I can’t fix anything. And I’m tired of trying.”

She says nothing, just waits patiently. Her eyes are fixed on a spot just beyond the horizon, but he know she is listening.

“Lola and I, we – “ he tries, but it is too hard. “I think I’m starting to become like my father.” His mother looks at him then, and it is pity he sees in her eyes. “I don’t know how we got here.”

Catherine pulls her shawl closer around her. “It’s not an easy thing,” she says, “to survive a rape.”

“I know,” Francis says. “I know, but nothing about Mary makes sense anymore.” He’s tried to understand, truly he has. He’s waited, and he’s been patient and he’s tried to be there for her as much as she might want him. But it’s months now, and he can see her healing, just not with him. He was brought up as a warrior, and he understands wounds. He can see hers closing up, but ugly and scarred, and he’s scared that when it’s done he won’t recognize her anymore. Or that she won’t recognize him.

His mother is watching him now. Her fingers are twisting around the edge of the shawl, and he recognizes the habit from Mary. He doesn’t see them together much anymore. “In Mary’s world, nothing makes very much sense anymore.”

 

 

 

 

 

Mary thinks she’s going mad. In one hand she’s holding a rewritten copy of the letter her uncle intercepted, in the other, she’s holding all the reasons she shouldn’t send this letter to Elizabeth. It’s reckless and bold, and she’s not entirely sure what she’s doing, but that’s how Mary used to make decisions. Dashing headfirst into the flames. But now she’s burnt and scared and she’s been hiding too long.

This isn’t her.

And so she watches the first messenger disappear into the horizon with her letter. A sense of finality washes over her. They can’t go back.

The clopping of hooves startles her, and she turns to see the second messenger arriving, clad in a crude armour.

“Have you found him?” she asks. The morning air is cold on her cheeks and her breath fogs the air. The messenger nods. As she removes the helmet, Mary sees that she has cut her hair short, in an attempt to appear a boy.

“He’s in a village not too far south,” she says. “I can take you there now, before the sun comes fully up.”

The idea of leaving before she has a chance to change her mind is appealing to Mary, and as she nods, she contemplates briefly calling for Conde. He would come with her, she is sure of it, and he would make her feel safe. Yet despite the familiar taste of fear in her mouth, Mary is tired of being protected. Tired of needing to feel safe.

Hoisting herself onto her horse, she looks at her guide, this thin waif of a girl she recruited a month ago when she had tired of hearing the court news secondhand. She has proved useful, this Marie. The bruises on Marie’s arms have faded since being taken into the Queen’s service. Sometimes Mary thinks she might be doing some good as queen. Most days, she needs reminding.

There is a familiarity in her voice as Marie speaks to her, and an understanding that Mary hasn’t felt for so long. “Let’s go, my queen.”

 

 

 

 

 

He looks for Mary, but he can’t find her.

This time he doesn’t see her ride away.

Bash is by his side when he first notices her gone, when she doesn’t appear at their morning meal. This is a small relief.

“Has Kenna seen Mary?” he asks Bash as nonchalantly as he can manage. Her absence is a bitter reminder of the deterioration of their marriage. “Are they with Lola?”

He hasn’t spoken to Lola about the previous night, but there’s really no need. They’ve passed each other in corridors, and they’ve spent time together over their child, but there is a weary understanding on Lola’s part. She doesn’t expect anything from him, and probably doesn’t want anything of him either. They’re friends and they share a son and sometimes it’s as simple as that. At other times, they’re just two people who hurt one of the people they care the most about. Everything’s a bit beyond words at those times, but somehow they live with themselves. Circumstances work against them.

 _They’ve not found much at the French court, these Scottish girls_ , Francis thinks.

Bash shrugs sympathetically. “I’ve not seen Kenna this morning. But I’ll go look.”

Once Bash thought he could give his wife the world. Or that she could be the world for him. But it was with a different girl and it was a whole other time away. Everything’s so much more difficult when the dust settles. But every morning he sees new lines on Francis’s face, and he’s glad, more than ever, that he’s not king.

“I’ll come with you,” Francis says. He rises heavily to his feet, and the brothers set out together. They pass Lola in the nursery and she offers them a wan smile. Catherine is in her rooms with her ladies-in-waiting. Their conspiratorial whispers follow them out the door. But Kenna they find in the gardens with Antoine and Bash has to clench his jaw to avoid punching Antoine when he sees the way he’s looking at her.

“Bash!” Kenna is happy when she sees him at first, then suspicious. “What are you doing here?”

 _Now isn’t the time_ , Bash thinks, watching Antoine smirk at him. But he takes a vicious pleasure in pulling his wife aside. “Have you seen Mary?”

She shakes her head. “She wasn’t in her room this morning,” she says, determinedly not looking at Francis. Francis tenses up next to him. He nods, reaching to brush her shoulder.

“I’ll see you tonight,” he says.

 _She deserves so much more than this,_ Bash thinks as Kenna leaves.

When he looks at Francis, his king and brother smiles sadly at him. “Take the day off, Bash. Go be with your wife.”

 

 

 

 

 

He can’t stop himself from seeking Conde out. The prince is in the stables pacing the floor when Francis finds him.

“Conde,” he calls out, unable to stop the jealousy coursing through him. Conde eyes him warily as he approaches. “My wife, have you seen her?”

It is relief that he feels at first, then something else as Conde shakes his head. “I came to look for her too,” he says. “Her horse is missing.”

Is it fear or déjà vu? Francis just isn’t sure.

 

 

 

 

 

Her cloak is heavy as she dismounts. Marie nods at the humble cottage. “He’s in there. He knows we’re coming.”

Of course he does, Mary thinks wryly. Her blind fear of his prophecy doesn’t quite extend to believing the man to be omniscient, but she’s glad she doesn’t have to take him by surprise.

Still, her heart is pounding as she raises her hand to knock on the wooden door, and it’s a jolt when he opens the door.

“My queen,” he says, and bows a little.

“Nostradamus,” she breathes, and maybe the answers she’s looking for are here.


	3. Chapter 3

Bash is stalking his wife. There’s no other explanation for it, but he’s sitting unobtrusively on a window ledge, watching as she strolls the grounds with Antoine. Her hair is pulling in the breeze and a flower she has woven there flies free. Antoine catches the flower in his gloved hand, and offers it to her. He lingers just a little longer than is necessary.

Bash’s heart clenches. It is not the first time he has lost love to a king. It feels like it won’t be the last. Not for the first time, Bash doesn’t quite know what to do.

“Brother.” Francis is behind him, face half in shadow. “What are you doing?”

He comes up next to Bash and the weight of his brother’s hand on his shoulder tells him that Francis has seen what he is watching. Bash fixes his gaze resolutely out the window. “Is there a world where I don’t keep losing?” he asks. Self-pity isn’t becoming for him, but bastards have to have an indulgence.

His brother makes no reply, but his steady clap on Bash’s shoulder is a firm reminder of how much Francis has lost too. “Mary’s missing,” Francis says. His words make Bash turn away from the window at last to face his brother and his duty.

“How long for?”

Francis shakes his head. “Just since this morning. But her horse is missing and she took no guards, no servants. I don’t know where she would have gone, Bash.”

Once upon a time, Bash might have known. But that was a whole lifetime and two marriages ago, and Bash doesn’t know Mary anymore, doesn’t know this strange silent queen who holds herself so aloof. The girl he knew was painfully in love with his brother, but as he looks up at Francis’s panicked face, he wonders how much his brother knows her anymore. The rumours about the state of affairs between their king and queen have flown around the castle for weeks, cooks and scullerymaids alike swearing that the royal couple don’t share bedchambers anymore, that Francis prefers to spend his time with his mistress and bastard son, that Conde is permanently glued to Mary’s side. Now, Bash feels a stab of empathy for his brother. It feels like they’ve spent half their lives chasing this woman that keeps eluding them.

“Is it premature to organise a search party?” he asks.

Francis shakes his head and then nods, his blonde hair flopping in and out of his eyes like the child he once was. “Perhaps,” he says, and he is both the king and the boy at once. “But will you come look for her with me, Bash? I don’t want her to be … hurt … again.” They both pretend not to notice his pause.

Bash nods, and the brothers leave the windowsill together. Far below, Kenna turns away from Antoine, her face upturned and wondering towards the castle.

 

 

 

 

 

He looks no older than when they’d met last, his beard a little greyer, perhaps, and a few additional lines adorning his forehead. An old brown cloak hangs loosely around his shoulders. As the smell of incense wafts from the inside of the house, he gestures for her to come in.

“Welcome,” Nostradamus says. A trace of irony lingers in his voice, but she brushes it aside. “I thought I might see you again.”

“I’d hoped I’d never have to,” Mary replies honestly, lowering herself onto a wooden bench. He settles in opposite her. Behind them, Marie drifts to the window and settles there, still as a shadow, looking out.

“You’re here about the prophecy,” Nostradamus says. He pushes a cup of tea towards her, and she picks it up, relishing the warmth in her numb hands.

“How do you know?”

Nostradamus laughs. It is not a happy sound. “My dear,” he sighs, and she allows the familiarity. “My dear, I only ever made, perhaps, two prophecies that ever mattered to you.”

They pause a moment for Aylee.

“Will it come to pass?” she asks. The teacup rattles a little in her hands. “Catherine had a vision.”

“Catherine…” he murmurs. The name is plaintive in his mouth. “Catherine has no more visions than you, my queen.”

Somehow his words do not reassure her. “So it’s not true then,” Mary presses. “The prophecy – the king won’t die?”

“The king?” Nostradamus frowns. The crinkle between his eyebrows deepens. “You mean Francis.” Mary always means Francis. “The prophecy may yet come to pass. I said you would cost Catherine the life of her first-born. My dear, the problem is – Clarissa is _not yet dead_.”

“But I killed her,” Mary says numbly. The words come easier than they have before. “She was my friend and I killed her.”

“I couldn’t find her body,” Nostradamus says. “I went back, and she was gone. And now – they tell stories in the wood, Your Grace. The dead walk, and a woman in white walks amongst them, waking half-gone souls who would rather be left in peace.”

“You think that’s Clarissa?” The tea has long gone cold in her hands, but Mary sips it anyway to distract herself from her racing thoughts.

“She has a pagan soul,” Nostradamus says simply. “Who else would take her in? What else would she crave but the company of these poor half-human monsters, so much like herself?”

“And while she lives, Francis may yet die?”

“It may be so.”

They sit in silence.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Give me three days,” Nostradamus says as they part. “Three days and I will find her. She will come to me.”

Mary lingers at his doorstep, though the sun is threatening to fall into evening. Mistrust and misgivings crash over her, but in the end, it is Nostradamus’s steady gaze and the brush of Marie’s hand against her own that allow her to nod slowly. “Thank you,” she says and mounts her horse.

Nostradamus watches her go. She is about to break into a gallop, when a thought strikes her, and she turns back. “Nostradamus!” she calls out. “Do you ever miss her – Catherine?”

His eyes meet hers. “Sometimes,” he says and it has to be enough.

 

 

 

 

 

The night has well and truly fallen but Francis refuses to give up the search. Bash shifts in his saddle beside him, his muscles aching. He refuses to think about Kenna back at the castle and who she might be with.

“Maybe she’s back at the castle by now,” he says to Francis. Francis straightens in the saddle. He keeps peering through the trees, his neck craning as if to beg the forest to reveal his ersatz wife to him. “Francis?”

Francis begins a slow nod, but halts halfway through. Through the forest, a warm breeze blows, and Francis’s face lights up as he sees something Bash cannot, or hears something he cannot. Then he is off, his horse whinnying as they race just past Bash’s eyeline. Bash wheels his horse around and follows suit.

“Mary!” he hears Francis cry out, and suddenly he can see her, frozen in her saddle like a cat caught suddenly the light of a flame. Francis has dismounted and is running towards her, when memory catches him, and he halts just shy of her horse. It’s relief in Mary’s posture as she relaxes her muscles slowly, as if needing to do it by memory. “I’ve been looking all over for you,” Francis says. His voice is measured, but his sharp breaths between his words betray him.

“I was just visiting a friend,” Mary replies. She glances up and catches Bash staring. He nods at her, and turns around to go. “Just visiting an old friend.”


	4. Chapter 4

He holds it in until he’s seen her to the safety of her bedchambers. That she can be grateful for. She can feel the tension between them, waiting to come to a head. It’s not until Marie has slipped away, feet lightly skittering away from the closed door that he speaks.

“A friend,” he says. “You were visiting a friend.”

“I have them sometimes,” she quips, suddenly defensive. “When they’re not busy birthing my husband children.” It slips out, sharp and vicious, and Mary’s not sure if she meant it as a defense or an attack. She’s not sure she meant for it to come out at all.

Francis looks hurt for a moment, but it is quickly replaced by anger. “I was worried,” he says, his voice low. “I was so worried.”

“If only your worry had come but weeks earlier,” she snaps. She’s still not sure where these words are coming from, but his anger is making her feel trapped and claustrophobic. Worse still, his concern is making her feel guilty. Maybe she’ll say whatever it takes for him to go away. Maybe he’ll be safe then.

It’s too late though. She’s broken through the dam and the walled-up words he’s held back come rushing through.

“What is it, Mary,” he shouts, and he can’t help himself. “Be honest. Why are you angry with me?”

Any other time, she might have hesitated, but they’re both so angry and they’ve hurt each other enough – what’s one more barb? “You’re always too late!” she yells back, and it’s the most honest thing she’s said to him in a while. “You were too late for Aylee, you were too late to see that our baby had slipped from me, and you were too late to save me.”

His face changes, and before he can step any closer, she’s seized with a sudden fear that he’ll forgive her, that he’ll want to hold her. She can’t give him up anymore. How much can one person sacrifice in one lifetime?

“And when I needed you to track down my attackers,” she says, “you went off in the wrong direction and I had to do it myself. You were supposed to be beside me. But there was only Louis.”

Maybe understanding breaks on his face then, maybe he finally understands the comfort that she draws from Conde. All these moments that he’s missed, all these decisions he’s made without her – Conde was there. It’s not his fault, not really, it’s just that she’s a queen and he’s a king, and there are always two countries between them.

“It wasn’t like this between us before,” she says softly. Her outburst has left her short of breath. “I don’t think we can ever be just a boy and just a girl.” The distance between them stretches lazily out. He stares at her from across the chasm, eyes flickering away. “I never want to hurt you,” Mary blurts out. But before hope can ignite – “Please, just go.”  

 

 

 

 

 

He leaves, of course. It just never feels like relief anymore.

 

 

 

 

 

Mary sees Conde the next day. He is looking out of a window in the dining hall, his handsome face profiled starkly against the grey sky. She is under no illusions that his presence here is anything but calculated. Still, she slides up next to him anyway. Her skirts brush the ground, announcing her presence.

He smiles when he looks at her, and her heart contracts a little in her chest. “Good morning.” Conde says. “I hear you went for a ride yesterday.” She doesn’t know how he knows but she knows he won’t ask. He may want to love her, may want her to love him, but he can’t expect anything more.

“It was a nice day,” she says lightly. She makes a slow movement to start walking and he follows her. Light dapples the hallways as they walk through. Somehow the castle walls don’t look as grey as they did yesterday. “I hear your brother has taken a liking to my friend.”

If he were a different man, he might confess his worry for his brother and the path he is descending. But he is a man of honour, and he is loyal to his family, so even though the words are on the tip of his tongue, he swallows them. “Kenna is a lovely girl,” he says noncommittally instead.

“Yes,” Mary replies. “Yes, and married to Bash.”

Conde looks at her sideways. “From what I understand, you were once engaged to Sebastian too.”

She stops suddenly as if he has slapped her. “That, Prince Conde, was a very long time ago.”

It wasn’t really. It was a summer, maybe two, but she has pushed it down so far that she barely remembers it anymore. She can’t allow herself to remember, really. It’s too dangerous.

“Not so long ago,” he says and she can’t understand why he’s pushing. “What was different? You were engaged to Francis before then.”

“We weren’t married then,” she replies slowly, a frown creasing her forehead.

He is insistent now, and so close to her. Panic rises in her throat, and something else. Maybe it is desire. It’s so hard to tell these days.

Mary opens her mouth slightly. She’s not sure what she wants to say. Part of her wants to run away, and part of her wants to stay. She doesn’t have to decide either way though, as laughter interrupts their moment. It’s childish laughter, a baby’s babble, mixed with a deeper laugh. She recognizes the laugh.

Francis comes tumbling down the hall, John Phillip in his arms. Lola is running after him, but they come to a sudden halt when they see Conde and Mary. Colour rises to Francis’s cheeks, and he drops his eyes to his son.

 _Stupid girl,_ she thinks, swallowing down the hurt. _What did you think would happen when you told him to be free?_

“He doesn’t deserve you.” Conde says evenly. He is the calmest person in the room.

Mary thinks of the scene moments ago. Francis was laughing, a wild free sound that she suddenly finds herself missing. _I don’t deserve him,_ she thinks. But the real question remains: does she want to?

Francis looks up, as if sensing her thoughts. Their eyes meet, and as his gaze flicks between her and Conde, she finds that she can’t quite read his expression. _What did you want from me,_ he seems to say, but there is something there too, some reproach or resignation.

She looks away.

 

 

 

 

 

She is alone when she receives the letter, impossibly quickly, as if Elizabeth is nearer than she thought. It makes her shiver. She reads it, and rereads it, pacing the floor in front of the fire. The room is too warm, then too cold, and she reaches for a shawl.

She has to leave the room.

 

 

 

 

 

The night is dark and full of shadows but when she buries her face into her horse’s mane she can’t tell where her horse ends and where the darkness begins. She misses her mother, or her ladies, or Catherine, or maybe even Francis, but none of them can help her end what she has already begun.

She’s not sure what she’s begun.

 _Two more days_ , she thinks _._ She resists the urge to jump on her horse and ride away.

 

 

 

 

 

Bash is sitting at the castle entrance when she returns, and it almost feels like he is waiting for her. It’s not surprising, really. They’ve developed this sixth sense about the other – each permanently aware of where the other is, and how they might best avoid being alone in a room with them. This time though, he is waiting. In the dark night he almost melds into the shadows. _Pagan,_  she thinks, and regrets it almost instantly. He doesn’t speak as she dismounts from her horse. Nor does he speak as he takes the reins from her and starts to groom her horse. There is a bead of sweat on her brow, and she wipes it inelegantly from her sleeve.

“You’re making Francis miserable,” he says finally, when he has worked the tangles from her horse’s mane.

Mary gazes at him. She’s not sure what she expected to hear, but it wasn’t this. Or maybe it was. “You’re making Kenna miserable,” she counters.

He looks defeated, as she expected him to, but not distracted. “I’m trying my best. Can you say the same?”

Mary thinks of the long nights of terrifying dreams, the waking in a cold sweat and feeling the walls close in around her. She thinks of how many times she’d screamed for Francis on that night, the longest night. She thinks of the men burning and feeling so alone. She’d looked up then, and Conde had been beside her, a stranger, but a friend.

But she also remembers. She remembers the boy who would look at her, stars in his eyes. She remembers their laughter, their stolen kisses. And now she remembers his silent, patient waiting, a waiting without reproach. She remembers him curled in bed with Lola, their bodies a cave to protect their son. She remembers the pain in his eyes that she has come to expect when he looks at her.

“I don’t know,” she replies.

Bash sighs, lowering himself onto an upturned pail in the stable. “What have we done, Mary,” he says. “What games have we played at. What have we become.”

She sits down beside him, and allows her head to rest on his shoulder. There is no answering stiffness, no tightening of his muscles. Whatever may have passed between them, right now, only love remains.

Mary thinks of the English queen moving ever closer to her.

“I’m trying my best, Bash. I am.”

“Francis is too,” he says.

Francis. She misses their easy friendship and conversation. She misses his arms around her, and the knowledge that he would always protect her. He had failed though, but she had survived.

She misses him.

“I miss you, Bash,” she says instead. “We were friends once, before everything else.”

He nods, and reaches for her hand. She lets him take it, his touch more tentative than she has ever felt it. “We had such dreams,” he says. “We were young then.”

“We were stupid,” Mary says. It feels like the truth.

_Two more days._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I'm not sure if I want to keep watching Reign anymore? LIke I read the episode summary, and I don't hate Conde or Francis or Mary and I don't even hate the writers and maybe it's even a compelling storyline, but I feel really sorry for Mary and Francis and what's happening to them and it makes me ridiculously sad. Especially because he has six months to live tops. But maybe it'll get better and they'll resolve things nicely, so someone convince me otherwise?


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter runs slightly parallel to the most recent episode 2x15 "Forbidden".

As always, the arrival of Mary’s mother complicates matters. Newly arrived in France for the funeral of her traitor brother, she seeks Mary out immediately post the funeral, and confronts Lola mere hours later. She spares nothing but cool words for Francis, and her aloof smiles at him are eerily reminiscent of those bestowed on him by her daughter. But it is Catherine she seeks out last, her swishing skirts announcing her presence at her door.

“Catherine,” she says by way of greeting.

Catherine is decanting the contents of a vial out, and doesn’t look up until she is finished. “Marie.”

“I am hearing the strangest rumours,” Marie de Guise purrs, entering the room without invitation. “About the presence of Diane in Paris.”

To her credit, Catherine doesn’t falter. “The whereabouts of that woman stopped being my concern the moment Henry died,” she says coldly. “One might even argue that that was the case while Henry still lived.”

There is amusement dancing across Marie’s face as she settles down across the table from Catherine. She eyes the bottles on the tabletop. “Come now, Catherine,” she replies. “You and I both know that Diane hardly had the best impact on your marriage with Henry. No one would blame you if you decided you needed to … avenge that.” Her hand trails lightly across the bottles on the table. Her nails are sharp and coloured.

“I had no need to,” Catherine counters evenly. “In the end, I am Dowager Queen of France, my son rules our country, and Diane is nothing.”

“She was nothing without Henry,” Marie agrees. “But before he died, she was everything to him. She provided him with Bash, whom he doted upon, and for a decade, you were the one with nothing – no husband, no love, and no children.” Her voice is soft and inviting.

Catherine hesitates. “There is no sting left, “ she says. “He is dead, and she is nothing. But they were hard years when I was young and foolish.” It’s an honest admission, and sounds starkly between the two women.

Something falls away from Marie de Guise’s face then, and she stands up, bringing her face so close to Catherine’s. “Then why are you not counselling Francis to avoid the same with Lola and his bastard child?” she spits, and it is a question Catherine just can’t answer.

She wonders when _because I want my child to be happy too_ became insufficient as an answer.

 

 

 

 

 

Mary thinks that Francis is at the party when she enters his bedchamber. The room is empty, silent. There is no evidence of the struggle that took place here. She sinks slowly into the bed and wonders how many women have come here since she vacated it. She wonders if Lola has found her way back into Francis’s bed. It is an uncharitable thought, but one that still stings.

She stares at the floor. The stones are painfully familiar to her. She can still remember them beneath her grasping fingers, can still feel them tearing at her hands. Her hands unconsciously clench into fists. It is now that she realizes how loudly she is breathing, how fast. There is a clamouring in her chest, and the room seems to blur before her. Reaching out a hand, she clasps a bedpost and clings to it, willing the spinning to subside.

It’s no good. The images race through her mind, fresh as day. The heavy breathing down her back (it’s just her own breathing), the fingers on her skin (it’s her own fingers), the touch on her legs (it’s just her dress); she has to move, has to leave this room, but she can’t move.

“Mary?” It’s a male voice, but it’s full of love and concern, and she feels herself unclench slowly. She keeps her eyes closed though, just in case. “Mary!”

She knows she has to open her eyes at some point, but they’re glued shut, and she has to force them open. It’s gladness though that floods her when she looks up to Francis gazing down at her from a safe distance. “Francis,” Mary sighs, and it’s just instinct, she’ll tell herself later, that sees her reaching for him with her other hand. It’s not till she feels his chest, solid beneath her fingertips that she allows herself to release the bedpost. One hand braced against his chest, the other clutching his arm in a vice grip, Francis doesn’t allow himself to look confused.

Her shoulders are shaking, but she doesn’t think that she’s crying until droplets are rolling down her cheeks. She looks up then, and she sees that it is Francis who is crying. Francis who is standing oh so still, so as not to frighten her away, Francis who is here, who is staying, who has stayed away as she’d requested, but is here, and now.

It is a coincidence, really, that they find themselves in the same room.

“My mother is dying,” she says into his chest. “My mother is dying, and I told her I was raped, and she didn’t care.”

She can’t tell anyone else for fear of destabilizing her mother’s reign, and she doesn’t discuss politics with anyone else, so the words just slip out. In this second it’s just her and her husband, just Mary and Francis, and it’s _good._ Or something very similar.

“I’m so sorry, my love,” Francis says. He still hasn’t moved.

Mary feels foolish. Pulling away from him, she settles back down on the bed. Francis sits down next to her. He puts his hand between them, palm up. It’s an offering. This time she accepts it, placing her hand lightly in his.

“All I wanted when I was growing up was for her to love me,” she says.

 

 

 

 

 

Mary doesn’t like to call them spies, but the girls she has rescued from various fates do know things. And yes, they do tell her that Antoine and Conde are conspiring to crumble Bash’s life to pieces, that Elizabeth has proposed marriage to Conde, that gold was exchanged between Narcisse and Antoine, but it still falls to Mary to put things together. A fleeting thought is spared for her uncle, falsely accused and newly murdered, but as she walks to find Conde, her thoughts are mainly for Kenna. If she keeps thinking about her friend, continually being used as a pawn in a king’s game, she won’t feel the ache of her own betrayal.

She finds Conde in the gardens, their relationship continually set out against the wild background of the French countryside. He is sitting on a rock, staring out into the distance, and she wonders if he just wants to go home too. Or if he is contemplating his impending engagement to Elizabeth.

“Hi,” she says.

He doesn’t jump, doesn’t turn around, and it’s like he’s always expecting her. “Mary,” he says, his voice a low rumble. “You’re following me.”

“I was looking for you,” Mary corrects. “I haven’t been following you.”

“And what do you want from me?” he exclaims. “What can I do for you, my queen? You say that you have feelings for me, but you won’t act on them, and you push me to your friend, but you change your mind. What more can I do for you? What more will you have me do?”

His vehemence startles her more than it should. Conde has been edging closer and closer to her, and she is almost inclined to let him. This – this could be something new, something different.

“Let’s go to Scotland,” she blurts out. They could go to Scotland, get away from all this Valois family history that plagues the two of them. In Scotland Antoine would no longer have a grudge against Kenna (not that Kenna would follow her), and maybe Elizabeth would see that she’s not trying to incite war against the Protestants and England.

Conde’s face lights up with a wild hope, and for a moment, Mary believes her own words. They would run away now, but more successfully than her venture with Bash. They would kiss in the snow, or in a cabin far from the harsh lights and stony walls of the French court. She would be happy, and so would he.

He opens his mouth to say something, or to kiss her, but she can’t do it anymore. She can’t keep up with this pretense that they’re normal people, that they’re not betraying both their families, that she’s not married, that she’s not half in love with someone else and trying not to be.

“It’s too late though,” Mary says now.” I _know_.”

Conde is guarded now. “What are you talking about?”

“Don’t,” Mary says. She’s just so tired. Tired of all the lying and the games, and she just wants to get back to a time before all this, a time when this was simpler. “I know about Antoine poisoning Henry, and that he’s trying to seduce Kenna just to get to Bash. I know about Elizabeth, Louis. Don’t lie to me. We’ve come too far for that.”

“Henry?” Conde says, and his surprise is so genuine that Mary just wants to believe him. “I don’t know anything about that.”

“And the rest?” She can feel her heart steeling against him.

He pauses, and just looks at her, and everything they could have had is slowly vanishing. “He’s my brother, Mary.”

She looks away. “Kenna’s my friend,” Mary says. “Don’t’ do this. I won’t tell Francis. Please just go.” In that moment, she hears herself, and it’s not a queen’s voice, but a scared broken little girl. She hates that they can do this to her; that they can take away everything she’s earned and built, and leave her feeling so lonely, so naked.

“I would have loved you,” Conde says, and leaves.

 

 

 

 

 

She doesn’t tell Francis in the end. But she can’t just leave it be, can’t just watch Antoine destroy Kenna. Kenna is the only one she has left. Greer has gone now, Aylee is long dead, and Lola, well, there’s no going back for her and Lola. Mary once stood and watched while Henry destroyed Kenna. She can’t watch it again.

“These kings,” she says to Marie, as Marie combs her hair. The bite of the brush on her head is soothing. “They think they can have it all, that our lives don’t matter.”

“But they do,” Marie says, and Mary knows it to be true. She nods at Marie in the mirror, and the girl slowly lowers the brush and turns to go.

Mary doesn’t tell Francis in the end, because they’re not there yet. But she’s can’t just leave it be, can’t leave her husband and his family in danger, and so she’ll find a way for the news to get to them, or Marie will. She has become like them, like these kings, moving her friends around her chessboard, playing with their lives. As she picks up her brush and runs it through her hair, she tells herself that it’s for their own good.

But it’s harder to remember a little later, when Kenna comes into her room, eyes wide and heartbroken, and she knows the news has made it to Francis and Bash. And now Kenna too.

“Kenna,” she murmurs, and it’s an invitation.

“I just wanted to be loved,” Kenna sobs, and as Mary gathers her friend up in her arms, she know something has to change.


	6. Chapter 6

A storm is brewing in the French court. The smell of rain is thick in the air, and the crickets are chirping with anticipation. There are dark looks being exchanged, and every man carries his sword by his side. Mary carries her dagger with her. No man will touch her unbidden again.

She is readying herself for dinner when Francis knocks. He looks troubled in the mirror, but he says nothing, moving to stand behind her instead. His movements are slow and careful as he approaches her. When she says nothing, he lets his chin rest gently on her hair. Mary lets out a breath she’s not realized she’s holding. Her body curves towards his. She meets his gaze in the mirror. The smile she gives him is small, sure enough, but it’s there, and something lifts on his face, as he smiles back.

“You look beautiful,” he whispers, and this time Mary lets his words hang in the air.

“Thank you,” she replies. “I thought it would be a formal affair, this being Navarre’s last night in the castle.” She reaches back to fasten a string of black gems around her neck, but fumbles.

“Here,” Francis says, “let me.” His fingers are soft against her skin. She lets her hands fall away. He clasps the necklace together, but doesn’t pull away. Instead, his hands trace swirling patterns on the back of her neck. The skin that he touches feels like it’s alight. Mary doesn’t recoil from his touch. She is unable to look away from him. The look in his eyes is so tender that she struggles to breathe.

“Mary …” Francis’s voice is a husky whisper.

“Yes,” she says, driven by an inane need to fill the moment. “I will be sorry to see him go – to see Navarre go.”

A shutter falls in Francis’s face then, and he pulls his hands away as if burnt. “I should go,” he says brusquely. “I’ll see you in the hall.”

Her neck aches at the loss of his touch. She twists to look back at him, but he is intent on racing out the door. At the last moment, he stops and looks back. “I’m sorry,” he says, but what for, she is not sure.

 

 

 

 

It comes to a head at dinner. Mary’s not quite sure how it happens. One moment, she’s laughing tightly at Kenna as she describes the day she’s had helping Antoine plan his party, and the next there’s a silence that falls.

“What’s wrong?” she asks, turning to Francis. She glances at Conde, half expecting to feel his heavy gaze on her. But he is looking away, looking in horror at the blue dye staining his brother’s fingers. Antoine is frozen half out of his seat, his fingers still entwined in the napkin he clutches. The blue stain on his fingers spreads into the napkin. Somewhere in Mary’s mind, she hears the clanging of a trap snapping shut.

“You killed my husband,” Catherine’s voice is even in the still air.

“This is ridiculous,” Antoine replies smoothly, but he cannot hide the way his hands are drifting slowly towards his sword.

“Not so ridiculous.” It’s a new voice, but one Mary recognizes, and as all heads turn towards Nostradamus, she sees him nod slightly at her. He’s not just back to help expose Henry’s killer. He’s found her. He’s found Clarissa. “We isolated the poison you used,” Nostradamus says, and it’s like he was never away, never tortured by Henry. In that moment he suddenly seems like the sinister imposing man Mary once knew. “It stays in the blood for years. All we had to do was to find a way to imbue your skin with a complementary antidote that would colour your skin.”

“It was Antoine,” Francis breathes. “Antoine and Narcisse.” Mary can feel his breath tickling the back of his neck. She shivers, but not from trepidation.

Antoine looks down at his hands, and throws the napkin down on the table. “Who the hell do you think you are?”

His hand is on his sword, and Nostradamus makes an abrupt movement, as if to run or to hurl a dining knife futilely at the King of Navarre. All eyes are on him, so nobody sees when Bash moves quietly from his corner behind the heavy drapes. It is a dagger he draws, not a sword, and it is Antoine’s chest that he plunges it into.

Mary doesn’t scream as the King of Navarre’s blood spurts from the wound onto her, staining her gown from belly up. She doesn’t move as the other men spring into action, as Kenna ducks out of the way. She doesn’t let her head sink into her hands (even though her head is so heavy, so heavy), doesn’t let her eyes close as Francis battles Conde, like so many weeks before. Except this time it is swords they are sparring with, not sticks. Somehow, as the candles flicker over them, as the blood flies, they still look like two boys playing.

Her heart is in her mouth as Francis slips backwards. The sickly iron tang of blood is in her mouth, and her fists clench. But he recovers, of course he recovers, and it is a swift motion that finds his sword in Conde’s chest.

Conde looks around, but it is for his brother, not for Mary. “Antoine,” he gasps. His hand is thick with blood as he offers it out to his dead brother. He falls.

Francis takes a step back. She’s not quite sure he knows what he’s done yet. And yet. His eyes find hers across the hall, and it is dismay and regret and victory. Her name is dying on his lips, and she wonders if some part of this had been for her. All around her, men are falling.

 

 

 

 

Francis reaches her finally

“Mary, I’m so sorry,” he sighs into her hair. “Are you alright?”

Mary looks up at him. Despite everything, she sees love there. “I knew,” she replies simply. “I knew.” She closes her eyes.

 

 

 

 

Kenna will sleep for three days. Bash will stay by her side, finally undistracted by his deputy duties. He will clean the blood splatters from her face, and she will dream of hiding under the dining table, and being completely fooled by Antoine. He will cry into her hair when no one’s looking at the thought that he came so close to losing her, and that he still might.

Maybe it seems like an anticlimax, but when she opens her eyes, three days later, she will look into his eyes, and they know they will be alright. Not now, not tomorrow, but soon. They’re married after all, for better or for worse, and this is one thing they’re both going to make work.

Catherine will pace the floor in her chamber. She’ll remember Henry, though she wants to forget. She’ll think of Nostradamus, though there’s nothing but regret there. He’ll open her door later that evening, on his way to Mary’s chamber, and smile. She’ll walk over to him and press a kiss to his cheek, and think that maybe somewhere somewhen they might have had something between them. As it is, he’ll squeeze her hand and leave. She’ll be able to sleep tonight.

Lola will rock her baby, and think of Narcisse. She’ll be glad that she wasn’t at the feast, that she’s still able to protect her child. She fears the day will come when she’ll no longer be able to. But she’ll wonder, and maybe always wonder, whether what they had was ever real. Maybe she’ll consider going to the dungeons to find him. But she’s a mother now, and she can’t put her child in danger. And he’s danger.

But Mary, Mary who was carried out of the dining hall by Francis, dress soaked in blood – Mary will be awake and waiting in her chamber. They’ll say later that she was pregnant with Conde’s child, that Francis murdered him in front of her in a jealous rage, that she miscarried from grief, but they won’t get it right. Not this time. Mary won’t sleep. Mary can’t sleep. Her skin is tingling and her heart is racing, and, for the first time since that brutal night when she was raped, she might actually feel alive again.

Nostradamus had looked in before on the pretext of checking she was alright. When the clock strikes twelve, it is time. She moves silently to the door, expecting the guards to be drugged and asleep like he had told her, but as she opens it, the door jars against a hard body.

It’s Francis’s voice that yelps in pain as her hand flies to her mouth in horror. “What are you doing here, Francis?”

His eyes are bleary with sleep in a way she hasn’t seen for months now, and it lends him vulnerability. “I wanted you to be safe.”

She wants to cry then, because that’s all she’s ever wanted for him too. “I’m okay, Francis,” she says, and she can’t help but reach out to cup his face. His stubble is rough against her fingers, but his curls brush softly against the back of her hand.

“You were the one who warned me about Antoine, weren’t you?” he says. It’s not really a question. “You had someone tell me.”

She shrugs, because there’s no point denying it now. “I wanted you to be safe.”

He is smiling at her now, his eyes soft, and Mary is seized by the urge to kiss him. She resists though. Just because Antoine and Conde are dead doesn’t mean that the prophecy is any less present. She refuses to let herself linger over Conde.

She turns away from him and makes to walk down the hall when he calls after her. “Let me come with you.”

Mary looks back. He is standing there, illuminated by the light from her room, face half in shadow. “You don’t even know where I’m going,” she says. This is a turning point.

He moves forward and his entire face is suddenly alight. There is earnestness in his voice that she’s hated these past weeks. “I don’t want to watch you ride away again.”

A lump in her throat, tears prickling her eyes. She swallows deeply and nods.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter takes a big historical AU turn here. please suspend all disbelief in favour of happy endings. <3

It is dark and cold and their story has narrowed down to the two of them: Francis and Mary galloping away from the castle in the thick of the woods. The wind pulls at their hair and tears at their clothes, and whistles between them. Mary can feel Francis next to her. She can hear his heavy breaths mixing in with the wind at her ears. He is so close that if she let go of the reins and stretched out her fingers she would be able to graze his coat or his skin.

A light shines through the darkness, and she pulls her horse to an abrupt stop instead. “Your majesties.” It is Nostradamus’s disembodied voice that comes floating out of the darkness. The lantern hangs low from his hand, illuminating his body only.

“Who’s there?” Francis calls out. Mary looks at him. His body is angled towards hers, horse slightly ahead of her. He is always one step ahead of her, running ahead in an effort to try to protect her. Her heart gives a jolt. Her ribcage feels too full.

“It’s okay,” she says. She can’t stop herself from reaching forward and placing a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “It’s just Nostradamus.”

“Nostradamus?” Francis says disbelievingly. Maybe he thought it was Conde that Mary was meeting out here in the darkness. Maybe he had been prepared for her to break his heart. Nostradamus lifts the lantern up to his face, and a wave of confusion breaks on Francis’s face. There are questions in his eyes as he turns towards Mary, but she can’t answer any of them. He is beautiful, she realizes; he is beautiful but the prophecy is too strong, and she can’t lose him now.

“Show us the way,” she tells Nostradamus instead, and the man clambers aboard his horse, and they are off again. Francis still rides in front of Mary and sometimes she sneaks sideways glances at him. His blond hair mussed and beautiful. _Let’s stay here,_ she wants to say, but doesn’t. _Let’s never go back._

 

 

 

There is a hut in the woods, half hidden in snow and ice, but they find it as the dawn is starting to break. The purple and gold rays streak the sky, and fills Mary with a slow dread. _Three days_. She’s still not sure what she’s going to find inside. She’s still not sure what she’s going to do. She presses her hand to her thigh, and feels the cold metal of her dagger and the warmth of Francis’s gaze.

“Mary,” he says. Despite Nostradamus standing next to them, face still and unreadable, the moment feels so intimate. “Mary, what are you doing?”

 _Saving you_ , Mary thinks. “I need you to stay here and keep guard,” she says instead. “I’ve arranged a meeting with Elizabeth of England. We have to be expecting her.” She doesn’t say what she must do inside, what she must do to ensure his future, but the shock of her revelation distracts him sufficiently such that he doesn’t ask.

Nostradramus offers her his arm. Leaving the horses and Francis behind, they push the door of the cottage open.

She’s not really sure what she expected, but Mary isn’t prepared for the wave of nostalgia and sadness that washes over her at the sight of the hunched figure in white. She is curled protectively into herself, eyes large and haunted as she looks up at Mary. Mary sobs when she sees her, the waif she thought dead now grown to a woman. She still wears a mask, but it is better fitting than the one Mary had once presented her. An abandoned nun’s habit lies behind her, and her head is shorn.

“What are you doing here, Clarissa,” she says. Her voice is thick with tears. Perhaps Clarissa, of all people, most stands for the moment when everything started to turn against her, when the die started rolling again. Perhaps Clarissa represents the times when she thought she had someone on her side always. Clarissa makes no answer – a strange croaking noise is all that escapes from her instead. It is a strange whim that comes over Mary but she is crossing the floor, and she is holding onto Clarissa, arms wrapped around her thin bony body, and they are rocking backwards and forwards and the strange croaking noise is continuing. _It’s the sound of them crying_ , Mary realizes when her vision threatens to cloud over with tears.

It’s that moment, as the dagger presses firm against her thigh that Mary realizes that she can’t do it. She loves Francis, yes maybe she can finally admit it, has always loved Francis, but she can’t kill Clarissa for Francis. But she can’t kill Francis for Clarissa either.

There is only one option left.

The realization is bitter on her tongue when Nostradamus murmurs urgently, “They’re here.”

As if in response, Francis bursts through the door. “Mary,” he says. “They’re here.” His eyes widen at the sight before him, and his voice dies away.

Out through the fluttering curtain, and out through the grimy window, the English party has arrived. It is small party: two men and an imperious female figure, cloaked in red.  Her heart is in her throat, as Mary starts to her feet. She is drawing her dagger before she knows it. Clarissa jerks away from her, but her hands and feet are bound by rope and she cannot move away.

“Mary?”

She looks up at Francis’s face and shakes her head slightly, barely perceptibly. _Goodbye,_ she is saying. _Goodbye for the English are coming for me, but not for you. Never for you._

With a swift motion, she slices the rope binding Clarissa and pulls the other girl to her feet. “Just go,” she tells Clarissa. Her voice breaks a little, but she doesn’t notice.

“Mary?” Nostradamus is frowning. Clarissa has always been something less than human to him, something shameful. Here, she is little more than a sacrifice.

But Mary is already shaking her head. “Not like this,” she says. “I killed her once. I can’t do it again.” She turns to Clarissa. “Please,” she says. “Please just go.” She turns away from Clarissa before her resolve weakens.

“But what of the prophecy? You cannot save both Clarissa and Francis.” Nostradamus reminds her.

Understanding dawns on Francis’s face. “This was about the prophecy?”

There is no time for her to explain or to argue it out though. The door is opening and shutting before they know it, and _she_ is here. Mary’s time is up.

 

 

 

 

“Too many people,” Elizabeth says imperiously. Her man points a sword at Nostradamus. “You, out.”  

Nostradamus glances at Mary, who nods. He complies without another word. The two queens size each other up. Elizabeth is young and beautiful, but there is a hardness about her that is reflected in Mary. Her hair is tightly coiffed and her brow is knitted tightly. The room is silent.

“I lost a friend coming here,” Elizabeth says, doing away with pleasantries. “You led us into a trap.”

“Conde was barely your friend,” Mary replies evenly. She is extremely aware of Francis next to her, his shoulder touching her shoulder. “And he did himself no favours getting involved in this mess.”

“I was fond of Louis,” Elizabeth says coldly. “And if this is not a trap, why is there someone hiding behind that curtain?”

Her companion moves forward, hand on his sword, and Mary can barely stop herself from flinching. There is a panicked noise and movement in the shadows, and before Mary can stop her, Elizabeth’s guard has drawn his sword and slashed at the curtain. She knows it is Clarissa’s blood before she sees it spreading across the fabric. It would be poetic if Mary’s heart wasn’t breaking. She tears the curtain open, cradling her once friend as she looks up into Mary’s face, eyes blank and unseeing. There’s no coming back from death for Clarissa, not this time. Maybe it’s better this way.

“There,” Mary whispers. She doesn’t trust her voice. “We’ve both lost someone dear. Is it time for peace yet?”

Francis touches her arm, and she can barely allow herself to breathe.

 

 

 

 

Somewhere in the snow, Nostradamus falls to the ground, the future changing and flashing brilliantly before him.

 

 

 

 

It is a hard bargain Elizabeth drives in the end, but Mary haggles it just as hard. They are queens, but in that cramped cottage, they seem like two fishwives at a market, each working as hard as they can to feed their families. Francis is by Mary’s side as – she can allow herself to acknowledge it now – he has always been, and she listens to his contributions too.

It is in a moment of frustration when they are getting nowhere that Mary blurts out: “Why must we be enemies? Our fathers made us enemies, but all Scotland wants is to be left in peace.”

“And you appropriating my coat of arms – that was a gesture of peace, was it?”

Mary pauses. “That was a mistake,” she admits. Her voice cuts through the silence. “King Henry wanted –“ She breaks off. “That is, kings have wanted more power than they can hold. But we are queens. Surely we know better.”

Elizabeth looks at her for a long moment. There is a faint smile in the lines around her mouth. Suddenly the other queen doesn’t seem so cold. “Surely,” she says.

Still, she drives a hard bargain. The French troops in Scotland should be withdrawn. Their presence merely threatens the English. If this treaty were successful, there would be no need to defend Scotland from the English.

“And the Protestant uprising?” Mary asks. “Who will subdue that?”

Elizabeth shrugs. “Me,” she says with authority, and that is that. It is a complicated process of ambassadors and court visits that she proposes, but enmity has gotten them nowhere. Now, maybe diplomacy can.

Mary looks at the other woman’s face. Young, but old. Beautiful, but tired. They are similar then, perhaps too similar. “Will you come back to court with us now then?” she asks.

Elizabeth agrees, and with that, the treaty is all but law.

 

 

 

 

Mary is riding back to the castle, Francis and Elizabeth on either side of her when she dares chance a look at Francis. The wind is curling through his hair, and he is looking at her, and there is so much promise between them. _Maybe now,_ Mary thinks, _maybe now we can begin._


	8. Chapter 8

Mary is standing on a balcony overlooking the courtyard when Catherine finds her. The wind is thawing out and she can feel herself thawing with it. She knows someone is approaching her before she sees it, but her body doesn’t tense up, and her skin doesn’t crawl anymore. It feels like a release.

“Mary.” It is Catherine. “I hear you’ve had a few adventures since last we spoke.” The old queen’s voice is low and mocking. Mary misses the affection in it.

“I just wanted,” Mary replies, and her voice is tired. “I just wanted to save my country.”

Catherine leads over the balcony with her. Below, the men are sparring. The metallic clangs of their swords on shields fills the air, but it is a friendly sound this time, mingled with their laughter. “Is that all,” she says. “And this feud between you and the English queen over a certain Louis Conde?”

There it drops, the reason for Catherine’s coldness. “There is no feud,” Mary replies. “We have settled our differences.”

“Oh really,” says Catherine coldly. “I’m sure Francis is happy with that.”

 

 

 

 

She doesn’t know how long she stays on that balcony, but it must be a little while, because Elizabeth is next to her.

“I hear the king’s mother is angry with you,” she says wryly.

“How quickly news travels in this castle,” Mary replies. Down below, Francis hears her voice, and turns his face up, looking for hers. He smiles a little. They have not spoken since returning to the castle, not properly. All that’s left between them is small looks and his hand on the small of her back as he escorts her in to dinner. Her thigh brushing his thigh under the table, and her not pulling away. They’re moving closer together, but at a snail’s pace, and Mary isn’t sure how to make it go faster.

“You’re a fool,” Elizabeth says. “You care too much and too little. The love you hold could destroy your rule.”

“I think it already almost did,” Mary says honestly.

They watch Francis walk across the courtyard, stopping to speak to Elizabeth’s man. Their heads are bent in friendly conversation, one blond head, one dark. Elizabeth’s voice is softer when she speaks again. “You’re a fool,” she says gently. “But so am I.”

 

 

 

 

Catherine finds her again later. This time Mary is sitting in the baby’s room, staring at his peaceful face in repose. It is, perhaps, a fitting place to find her.

“Perhaps I was a little harsh before,” Catherine announces her entry. “After all, I know what it is like to want something more.”

Mary shakes her head slowly. “It wasn’t that,” she says. “You once told me that Francis would die because of me, and I moved heaven and hell to make sure that could never happen, even if it meant taking everything he wanted away from him.”

“The prophecy,” Catherine says. It’s a step closer to understanding.

“You told me it would come to pass, Nostradamus’s prophecy,” Mary continues. “I couldn’t take everything away from Francis again. This time, before they killed Clarissa, I was going to take myself out of the picture.”

Catherine flinches a little at the mention of her daughter, but shakes it off anyway. “So when you were meeting with Elizabeth …”

“I was going to abdicate in favour of my brother,” Mary replies simply. “I was going to give myself up to Elizabeth as a prisoner of state, and put an end to this conflict once and for all.” It had been a difficult decision, and not one Mary had come to lightly. She would have raged against the thought in her younger days, but that Mary was a fighter, brave and fierce. And this Mary? This Mary’s just tired.

“And Conde?” Catherine’s voice is gentle.

“Conde,” Mary sighs. “I thought he loved me.”

Sometimes it really is that simple.

Catherine doesn’t allude to the ghosts that lie in her past, Now that Clarissa is gone, really properly gone, there’s no more physical evidence of that love. “I love my son,” Catherine says quietly. “I love my son, and I don’t dislike you, and I just want him to be happy.”

“Me too,” Mary says, and means it.

 

 

 

 

There is the faintest hint of Mary’s perfume in the air that is puzzling Francis when he steps into the nursery, but only Catherine is there. “Mother,” he exclaims. His mother has never spent much time with his son, choosing to bestow disdainful looks on Lola instead. “What are you doing here?”

She shakes her head evasively, and stands up to go. But something in Francis’s face, something pleading, must change her mind, because she relents. “I was looking for Mary,” she says.

“Mary was here?”

“Of course,” she sighs. “Maybe for her, this estrangement between the two of you stretches further than the night of her assault. Maybe this baby started it all – the tension, the desperate attempts to conceive. The frightening inability. Maybe when you claimed Lola and the baby, when you left Mary even though she asked you to stay to help her fight the plague, that’s when it started.”

Francis wants to protest but there is something in Catherine’s voice that stops him. An edge. “I spent years wondering why Diane could have Bash and I couldn’t,” she says. “And when you claimed the baby, Mary probably started wondering the same thing.”

“I just,” he starts. “I love my son, and that’s easy. But I love Mary too. But it’s so hard.”

Catherine nods. “Make a choice, Francis,” she says. “But don’t pretend you can make everyone happy. That’s not what kings do.”

“I miss Mary,” he says.

Her eyes are softer this time. “Me too, son. I miss her too.”

 

 

 

 

When her mother leaves, it is with a soft smile and a gentle touch. “You are my daughter,” she says, and they are the kindest words Mary has heard from her mother in a while. “I fear for your safety.” She doesn’t utter declarations of love or undying affection. They wouldn’t ring true from Marie de Guise anyway. “Be true,” she says, but doesn’t tell Mary to whom.

Mary is a queen, but maybe sometimes her crown and her heart align.

 

 

 

 

During the time they’d been apart, Francis had come to her chamber to seek her out countless times. This time, it is in the dark of night that Mary approaches his chamber. Lighting the corridors with a single candle flame, she lets herself into his room.

Francis is sitting up in bed when she enters. His white nightshirt is loose at the collar. “I hoped you would come,” he says, and his eyes are warm and Mary wants to cry at the amount of love she sees there.

Her throat is choked up, and it feels like there’s nothing left to say, so she climbs into his bed and kisses him. There’ll be time to talk later, she knows with certainty. His body is warm as she presses against him, and he shivers a little at her cold skin against his. But her mouth is warm and her tongue slides against his teeth before he opens his mouth to hers, and this time, his shiver has nothing to do with the cold and everything to do with the fact that her hands are everywhere and she’s kissing him like she never expected to again. He pulls her towards him so that she is lying on top of him but he lets her dictate the pace and it’s her hands that are fumbling with his shirt, and her hands on top of his that guide him to her laces. He can barely breathe when their skin meets, her breasts pressing against his chest, nipples hard in the cold. He can feel himself move against her thigh, but he doesn’t want to move, doesn’t want to scare her away.

 His hands flit down her sides, and he can feel her muscles rippling and tensing, but she doesn’t run away like he’d dreamt in nightmares so many times before. He wants to flip them over, to run his tongue down her skin, but he doesn’t move, stills his hips against hers, and kisses her deeply instead.

 _I thought I would lose you_ , she tries to say with her eyes as she rests her forehead against his. Maybe he understands her, maybe he doesn’t, but he does understand as she slides her hands over his chest, then lower. He gasps out her name when she grasps him, and she allows herself to remember how much she loves him. How much he loved her. Hopefully still does.

They both cry when she slides him into her. This started with an act of violence. Now it takes an act of love to finish it. She can feel him holding back as she bucks her hips against his, can feel it in the careful tightness of his muscles, the way he grits his teeth.

“Please,” she whispers, and it’s like a wall breaking between them, as he grasps her so tightly, but so gently, hands on her hips, and he kisses her as his hips start to jerk up into hers.

“Stay with me,” he whispers later as they lie in bed together. _I love you_ , his fingers say, as they trace out the words on her stomach.

This time Mary finds her voice. “I love you,” she says, and turns up to kiss him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the end of my goodbye love letter to reign! <3 someone call me when (if) Mary and Francis are happy again. hope you all enjoyed x


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